Lisa Kareieva

My path into software started in 2022, and not the way you'd expect. I'd barely touched a computer, and I was sure programming wasn't for me — too technical, too far from how my brain worked. What actually drew me in was maths: I'd always been a little ahead of my classmates in algebra and geometry, and I loved that a single problem could have several different correct routes to an answer. That's the exact thing I'd later fall for in code.

That curiosity turned into two courses at Hillel IT School, working from complete basics through responsive layout, animation, Google Maps integration and JavaScript fundamentals — building small games and alarm apps along the way.

Then, in November 2022, the war forced my family to move to Ireland. For months I was doing two schools at once — my Ukrainian college online, two hours ahead, from a hotel room built for three that the four of us shared, no desk, just a bed, a phone and headphones — starting at 6am before Irish school began at 9am. I sat exams for one school from the toilets of the other. I finished the Leaving Certificate on 448 points, and while it wasn't code, I'm still proud of how I got there.

From there I chose Computer Science at Donegal Town Abbey Vocational School, taught myself Python from scratch in a few months for my Leaving Cert project — a micro:bit build — and came out with an H3 I still count as one of my best results. Today I'm studying Software Development at ATU Sligo, and the projects have gotten a lot more ambitious — full-stack apps with authentication, carts and real deployment. What hasn't changed is that pull toward a problem with more than one way in — I still like being the one who finds it.